In Which Finds-the-Way Acquires Auriel’s Bow

Back to my catchup on my German Skyrim playthrough! Familiar territory here, with running the Forgotten Vale portion of the Dawnguard plot. So this post is mostly language commentary, talking about translation things I noticed during this session. But it also contains my being surprised that it’s taken me this long to realize that Falmer (or at least, the female shamans) do in fact have hair.

The actual play session for this post was mid-August 2024. Eleven more posts after this one, and Finds-The-Way’s playthrough writeups will be done!

Play by play

• Play date: 8/10/2024
• Session number in this run: 56
• Picked up at the beginning of the Forgotten Vale and started running the place
• Followed usual playthrough order, with the walkthrough page for it up on the wiki
• Deliberately skipped looting a lot of the Falmer tents
• Did one emergency port out just before the lake with the twin dragons, just to drop off stuff at Lakeview, and also to get Serana to port back to me
• Lucia gave me a wild boar tusk when I showed up, heh
• Returned to the Vale and took out the twin dragons, with aid of Serana and storm atronach
• Got the word for Drain Vitality off the Word Wall
• After taking out the twin dragons, since I was in fact playing an Argonian this time, I went diving for all three of the submerged chests as well as the two satchels
• Lost Serana somewhere right around the Emerald Paragon frost giant, but she showed up again when I entered the Glacial Crevice
• Got through there and took out the frost giant with the Diamond Paragon
• Reached the next cluster of Falmer tents–only to realize that shit, I missed one of the Unknown books!
• So I rolled back to a previous quicksave and re-ran that portion of the Vale, because I did actually still want to get all four of the books
• That required me to re-run the Glacial Crevice, but I was okay with that
• Got back out to take out the Diamond Paragon giant again, and re-ran the area with the last Falmer tents
• Serana of course kept raising Falmer!
• Made it past the final wayshrine and on into the temple of Auri-El
• Stopped to take out the Ruby Paragon frost giant
• But as per previous playthroughs, left all the frozen Falmer alone and went straight for Vyrthur
• Made it to him and took him out as per previous playthroughs
• Managed to keep him from falling down to the lake this time ;D
• Nabbed his armor because fuck you, snow vampire, that’s why
• Got the bow from Gelebor and got him to bless all the elven arrows I had on me
• Talked to Serana to settle the plan: go back to Isran to check in, then aim for taking out her father
• Boinged back to Lakeview from there
• Lucia asked me for an allowance
• Also, HI GREGOR, you’re at the wrong house, my dude
• Stashed a bunch of things in the sell chest
• Left off ready to return to Fort Dawnguard, and saved there until next time

General commentary

This time through in Forgotten Vale, I deliberately skipped looting a bunch of the Falmer tents. Part of this was to keep my carry weight down. But part of it was also that even though Skyrim would have you believe that the Falmer are ostensibly evil, the game does contradict itself–and the narrative you get from Gelebor makes it real hard for me to not be sympathetic to the Falmer, at least a little bit.

So I’m never really entirely happy looting their stuff. And so I dialed that down hard in this session. Only later in the play did I discover that deliberately avoiding looting the tents did cost me! I missed one of the Unknown Books, and had to roll back a bit to take a second run through that area and get it properly.

That said? Didn’t keep me from having to do at least one emergency port out to drop stuff off at Lakeview. And for that matter, to get Serana back as well, given that she’d managed to disappear on me again as she does.

Now that I know there’s an easy way to retrieve wandering NPCs, though, I really ought to set myself up a little batch file to take care of that problem. Especially for playthroughs where I don’t actually have any mods–since I’m pretty sure at this point I’ll do a Spanish playthrough, and that’ll likely be mod-free. So I’ll need to have a Serana retrieval batch file in my toolkit.

Since I was playing an Argonian this time, I made a specific point of diving for the submerged chests in the lake! But the satchels were hard to find–and being an Argonian didn’t really help with the problem of diving during nighttime game hours. Which meant that even if I didn’t have to worry about drowning, I could still see fuck all.

I got turned around a lot down there. And circled around a lot until I finally came back up through one of the holes in the ice! Definitely would not want to have tried that with any other race of character. And even with Finds, I can’t imagine she liked being submerged in frigid northern water that long. Even if Argonians do have some kind of ability to adjust themselves to their environs, it seems to me that “ability to not freeze to death in an icy lake” should be a lot to ask of a Hist-created metabolism!

Being an Argonian, though, definitely made running the Glacial Crevice and taking the water shortcut a lot easier!

Last but not least, amused by my own notes, and mentioning a sell chest. This being a non-modded playthrough, this should not be confused with the Sell Chest in Legacy of the Dragonborn! In Finds’ run, it was just the chest in Lakeview that I designated for storing stuff I knew for sure I was going to want to sell.

Surprise! Falmer have hair!

Serana of course kept raising Falmer we killed, as she does. This time through, I got close enough to one, a shaman, that I actually saw the top of her head. And I realized in surprise that she looked like she had hair.

I had somehow never actually realized that female Falmer do actually seem to have hair! I’m surprised at myself that it took me this long to realize it, too. All this time, I think I’d been visually parsing the heads of female Falmer as maybe having tentacles of some kind, just because the look of them has always reminded me of the Twi’lek species in Star Wars. But no, it’s definitely hair.

Which male Falmer do not seem to have, or at least the ones without armor I always see don’t, anyway.

This raises questions:

1. Can Falmer of both sexes have hair?
2. If they do, is it always white?
3. Or is having hair a sign of status as opposed to gender?

The UESP wiki says that Falmer shamans that appear on camera are always female. This is not, however, the same thing as all Falmer shamans being female in general. And the Lore page for Falmer does not call this out one way or another.

So it’s certainly possible that there could be male Falmer shamans. Which would raise the question of whether male shamans would also have hair.

I think I could buy that any Falmer with hair at all would have it be white. The Falmer are super pale. I don’t know that it’s biologically reasonable to call them albino? We know from Gelebor that the Snow Elves were originally white-skinned and white-haired to begin with, so the Falmer being still super pale tracks. It’s not genetic abnormality for them, it’s because their progenitor species was already that pale. And that included hair. So it’s reasonable for any Falmer with hair to have white hair in particular.

Still, I don’t know if we have enough information to say for sure that only female Falmer have hair. Other than the hair, there doesn’t seem to be much sexual dimorphism amongst the Falmer on camera, so who knows? Any of those warriors you find in Skyrim with the creepy helmets covering their faces and the chitin armor could well be female! And could also actually have hair under those helmets!

Language commentary

Interesting terms observed:

• Talreh: Vale Deer
• Talsäbelzahntiger: Vale Sabre Cat
• Höhle des vergessenen Tals: Forgotten Vale Cave
• Mantren: Mantras
• Erleuchtung: Enlightenment
• Wasser schöpfen: Draw Water
• Titelloses Buch, Band I: Unknown Book, Vol. 1 (lit. “Untitled Book, Volume 1”)
• Uralt(es): Ancient
• Geldbeutel: Coin Purse
• Frostriese: Frost Giant
• Amethystglanzstück: Amethyst Paragon (lit. “amethyst highlight/masterpiece”)
• Saphirglanzstück: Sapphire Paragon
• Wegschrein der Entschlossenheit: Wayshrine of Resolution (lit. “wayshrine of determination”)
• Smaragdglanzstück: Emerald Paragon
• Diamantenglanzstück: Diamond Paragon
• Titelloses Buch, Band III: Unknown Book, Vol. 3
• Gletscherspalte: Glacial Crevice
• Titelloses Buch, Band IV: Unknown Book, Vol. 4
• Wegschrein des Glanzes: Wayshrine of Radiance
• Wasser ausgießen: Pour Water
• Allerheiligstes: Inner Sanctum
• Eingefroren: Frozen
• Rubinglanzstück: Ruby Paragon
• Auriels Kapelle: Auriel’s Chapel
• Uralter Frost-Atronach: Ancient Frost Atronach
• Geht es Euch gut?: Are you all right? (used by Serana when she checks on me, after Vyrthur drops the ceiling on our heads)
• Alter Falmerbrustpanzer: Ancient Falmer Cuirass
• Alte Falmerpanzerhandschuhe: Ancient Falmer Gauntlets
• Alte Falmerstiefel: Ancient Falmer Boots
• Sonnengeheiligte(n) Pfeile(n): Sunhallowed (Elven) Arrows
• Sonnengeweihter Elfenpfeil: Sunhallowed Elven Arrow
• Elfendolch der Schneestürme: Elven Dagger of Blizzards

When you talk to all of the spectral prelates, they greet you with this line:

Are you prepared to honor the mantras of Auri-El and fill your vessel with His enlightenment?

In German, the equivalent line is:

Seid Ihr bereit, die Mantren von Auri-El zu ehren und seine Erleuchtung zu empfangen?

This is not quite a direct translation. The latter bit in particular translates back from German as “receive His enlightenment”. There’s no connotation there of filling your vessel. German does have what seems to be a relevant word–Gefäß. (Source) So I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be used here, unless the context in this usage isn’t meaningful in German.

I noted a small translation inconsistency. The first wayshrine in the Vale is the Wayshrine of Sight, watched over by the spectral Prelate Athring.

In German, his dialogue calls it ‘Der Wegschrein der Sicht’. However, the portals on the other wayshrines, as you open them up, translate to ‘Der Schrein der Vision’.

So you lose the connotation of ‘wayshrine’ in the latter example, which strikes me as a problem. Had I been QA’ing this release, I’d have called this out, especially given that the translation ‘Wegschrein’ is used in the game as well.

I’m less certain about ‘Sicht’ vs. ‘Vision’, though. Both are legit German words. If I understand my usual sources correctly, ‘Sicht’ is more in the context of visibility, although it can also mean point of view. ‘Vision’ is along the lines of premonition, or having a vision about something, as opposed to the physical functioning of the eyes. I can see an argument for either of these being relevant to the Wayshrine of Sight. But I think I lean towards ‘Vision’ as maybe being a bit more appropriate, since there’s a bit more of a potentially religious flavor there. Which would be appropriate for the context of why you’re going to all the wayshrines to begin with.

Also, noting for the record that Gelebor’s line about blessing elven arrows in lots of 20 still sounds weird and repetitive, even in German!

“Titelloses Buch” as the translated name for the Unknown Books in the Forgotten Vale, is another instance of my not being sure of the reasoning behind the translation choice. “Titelloses” translates to “Untitled”, not “Unknown”. And the books do have titles! It’s just that the player doesn’t actually know them until Urag translates them at the college. So I’m a little surprised that the books weren’t called something like “Unbekanntes Buch”, since “unbekannt” is the word I know for “unknown”.

“Glanzstück” is the word the translation uses for the various Paragons in the Forgotten Vale. It translates back to English as “highlight” or “masterpiece”, or if you want to get French about it, “pièce de résistance”. (Source)

As noted in my previous Finds post, I saw inconsistencies in whether Vyrthur was called “Erzvikar” or “Erzkurator” for his title. When I finally found him, he was “Erzvikar”, but I saw him referred to as “Erzkurator” when I reached the Inner Sanctum and got in, and got the quest objective to locate him.

To my eye, there’s also a bit of inconsistency in how “ancient” is translated. I saw “Uralt” getting used in this session, but I also saw just “Alt”–in particular for the latter, with Vyrthur’s Ancient Falmer gear. So not sure why “Uralt” wasn’t used on those pieces. Though it could certainly be a question of keeping the character count down on the translated strings!

I saw two different translations for Sunhallowed Elven Arrows, too. One that appeared in Gelebor’s dialogue, and another for the actual objects put into my inventory when I got him to bless my stock of elven arrows.

Next time

Finds-The-Way’s next post will feature taking down Harkon at Castle Volkihar; retrieving Valerica from the Soul Cairn; returning to the Vale for finding all the paragon loot; taking the unknown books to Urag for translation; and moving the fishing quests farther along!

Screenshots